Mencken said it best: Smart people are FUCKING SCARY
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In response to my last post, Kavan Wolfe asked, "Why do people vote for idiots?" … I was about to launch into my version of the facts of the matter, but I realize HL Mencken said it all back in 1920, prompted by a discussion of the presidential race between Warren Harding and James M. Cox:
It is not often, in these later days of the democratic enlightenment, that positive merit lands a man in elective office in the United States; much more often it is a negative merit that gets him there. That negative merit is simply disvulnerability. Of the two candidates, that one wins who least arouses the suspicions and distrusts of the great masses of simple men. Well, what are more likely to arouse those suspicions and distrusts than ideas, convictions, principles? The plain people are not hostile to shysterism, save it be gross and unsuccessful. They admire a Roosevelt for his bold stratagems and duplicities, his sacrifice of faith and principle to the main chance, his magnificent disdain of fairness and honor. But they shy instantly and inevitably from the man who comes before them with notions that they cannot immediately translate into terms of their everyday delusions; they fear the novel idea, and particularly the revolutionary idea, as they fear the devil. When Roosevelt, losing hold upon his cunning at last, embraced the vast hodgepodge of innovations, some idiotic but some sound enough, that went by the name of Progressivism, they jumped from under him in trembling, and he came down with a thump that left him on his back until death delivered him from all hope and caring.
It seems to me that this fear of ideas is a peculiarly democratic phenomenon, and that it is nowhere so horribly apparent as in the United States, perhaps the nearest approach to an actual democracy yet seen in the world. It was Americans who invented the curious doctrine that there is a body of doctrine in every department of thought that every good citizen is in duty bound to accept and cherish; it was Americans who invented the right-thinker. The fundamental concept, of course, was not original. The theologians embraced it centuries ago, and continue to embrace it to this day. It appeared on the political side in the Middle Ages, and survived in Russia into our time. But it is only in the United States that it has been extended to all departments of thought. It is only here that any novel idea, in any field of human relations, carries with it a burden of obnoxiousness, and is instantly challenged as mysteriously immoral by the great masses of right-thinking men. It is only here, so far as I have been able to make out, that there is a right way and a wrong way to think about the beverages one drinks with one's meals, and the way children ought to be taught in the schools, and the manner in which foreign alliances should be negotiated, and what ought to be done about the Bolsheviki.
In the face of this singular passion for conformity, this dread of novelty and originality, it is obvious that the man of vigorous mind and stout convictions is gradually shouldered out of public life. He may slide into office once or twice, but soon or late he is bound to be held up, examined and incontinently kicked out. This leaves the field to the intellectual jelly-fish and inner tubes. There is room for two sorts of them—first, the blank cartridge who has no convictions at all and is willing to accept anything to make votes, and, secondly, the mountebank who is willing to conceal and disguise what he actually believes, according as the wind blows hot or cold. Of the first sort, Harding is an excellent specimen; of the second sort, Cox.
Such tests arise inevitably out of democracy—the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob emotions. In private life no man of sense would think of applying them. We do not estimate the integrity and ability of an acquaintance by his flabby willingness to accept our ideas; we estimate him by the honesty and effectiveness with which he maintains his own. All of us, if we are of reflective habit, like and admire men whose fundamental beliefs differ radically from our own. But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental—men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, of self-respect, it is cruelly hard. But if he is, like Harding, a numskull like the idiots he faces, or, like Cox, a pliant intellectual Jenkins, it is easy.
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
… basically, stupid voters are afraid of smart candidates. ;-)
Which is, IMO, a good argument in favor of the UK's party-centric election system. You vote for the party who's platform you support, and the party chooses its own leader (and therefore, your Prime Minister). On the one hand, this would seem to leave room for a lot more back room corruption, but on the other hand, it lets the public vote for the ideas they support, while people who actually understand the details of the office and politics in general choose the best man to support that platform.
Dunno if that could ever work in our ego-obsessed, cravenly selfish, utterly-fucking-greedy society though. Can you imagine the uproar among the megalomaniacal sorts who run for office here, if they were told that they'd have to bow to the platform they ran under, or the Party would have them replaced? Good lord. We might actually end up with a whole different class of politicians. Wouldn't THAT be a disaster?
@alpha - Thanks for sharing that. Sadly, I've never read that piece before.
"Which is, IMO, a good argument in favor of the UK's party-centric election system. You vote for the party who's platform you support, and the party chooses it's own leader (and therefore, your Prime Minister)."
Isn't that essentially what we have? Our president is really just a voice box for the party (and wealthy special interest groups).
I can't even believe the discussions I hear/read about the presidential election. It's always republicans this, democrats that. There are so many hardliners out there that will vote republican period (and vice verso). The president is just as Mencken suggests, a "blank cartridge" or a "mountebank" (or a combination) used to sway anyone sitting on the fence.
25th July 2008 at 6:41 pm | permalink |That video in your previous post was a perfect example. It's not that he (McCain) is incapable of expressing his opinion, he just couldn't remember what the party line was on that subject (or never knew).
@Rick: The parties here can't do jack shit to a president who turns around and back tracks on campaign promises, except fail to nominate them the following year (and with the current primary system, even that's unlikely to happen). I'd say they're more voice boxes for special interest groups than anything, but so are the parties for that matter (which is where the whole system falls apart, imo).
At any rate, remember Bush the Elder's promise "No New Taxes"? That turned out to be bullshit (big fucking surprise there), but in the UK, if no new taxes had been a major party plank, and the Tories got pissed that he reneged on it, the party could have removed him from office DURING his elected term, and put someone else in his place.
I don't know whether or not that also happens to the members of the UK's House of Commons, but I would have LOVED to see all the congressional Democrats elected during the mid-term election get booted out of office the minute their spines turned to jelly, and they started voting along with all of Bush's bullshit. "Sorry guys (and gals), but that wasn't the party line when you got elected … pack up your office, your replacement arrives tomorrow!"
25th July 2008 at 7:42 pm | permalink |Your constitution has a clause about kicking the POTUS to the curb. Y'all just big pussies about using it. Here in Canada, unless the opposition is an unelectable puss and knows it, they just run a non-confidence vote on the PM and it's election time baby :D we went almost 2 years without a functioning government but damn did it make watching the news interesting.
And sadly, America scorns intellectuals while they are worshiped as heroes in countries like France. Yes I said France, suck it.
I'm just surprised Junior hasn't declared war on Iran yet and suspended democracy.
25th July 2008 at 7:59 pm | permalink |@alpha: the Westminster system - the name for the system used by the UK, Aus, NZ (and I would guess Canada, though I'm not 100% sure on that one) and probably a bunch of others too, doesn't allow, generally speaking, for individual representatives to be reelected. As Dave said, the opposition can force a whole new election at any time, which means every member of the lower house, and thus the PM.
While the whole replacing the leader mid-term sounds cool in theory, I can't recall anytime in recent history that it's happened in Aus. Happened a bunch in the early days before parties really existed, and the PM needed to have support from a majority of *independents*, not just have the biggest party in parliament >=D
25th July 2008 at 8:54 pm | permalink |@anyone - "Why do people vote for idiots?"
So what is an average person like me supposed to do?
I have a democratic governor who has done nothing to stop my state (Michigan) from going down the shitter (highest unemployment rate in the nation),(see also, Flint or Detroit). I have a republican president who would like nothing more than to ratify Iraq as the 51st state and declare all troops home. Meanwhile, our domestic issues continue to mount. I know neither person is solely responsible for all of these problems, but like the old saying goes "if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem."
Independent? I made a comment in a previous post about electing the person who would screw us the least and someone had a reply which I think accurately describes why more people don't vote independent. He said something along the lines of "we tend to vote for the person, who can beat the person, who will screw us the most." So basically, we don't vote independent because we feel like we're wasting our vote.
So, WTF?
26th July 2008 at 8:37 am | permalink |Wow, not everyone gets to inspire a post on his favorite blog. :-)
I think the last two sentences there are about as deep a zeitgeist of the last 7 years as I've ever seen. The fact that this guy figured it out in 1920 puts him in league with Nostradamus as far as I'm concerned.
26th July 2008 at 12:46 pm | permalink |In Norway, if the government chosen by the prime minister/agreed on (usually it's a coalition government) does not have or cannot achieve majority support in the national assembly/elected assembly, either she/he gets a no-confidence (or one of the ministers gets a no-confidence vote, and as an unwritten rule the prime minister and the other ministers then step down) vote - or the reverse: (again, as an unwritten rule) - knowing the sitting government does not have the support it needs, it asks a question to the 'cabinet', and if it does not get a majority in support, it then resigns.
I think a lot of the issues in the US now do not stem from a lack of a potentially working system. It's just that the system (any governing system) will never work if the participants don't actually… follow it. Especially if a lot of it is based in unwritten rules/courtesy/tradition. (For instance, the fact that bush -hasn't- stepped down after his fiasco, is to me pretty damn shocking. He shouldn't have to be kicked out, he should voulentarily have stepped down and admitted he screwed up.)
26th July 2008 at 8:12 pm | permalink |@DAVE ID: "Your constitution has a clause about kicking the POTUS to the curb. Y'all just big pussies about using it."
"Y'all"?! Congress are pussies … can't argue that. A LOT of the US public are pussies, true. But ALL of us? C'mon, go easy there! ;-)
"America scorns intellectuals while they are worshiped as heroes in countries like France."
Fucking disgusting yes. I completely agree. I remember the Kerry race, where the whole education thing was first used as a major attack point in a national election (in my recollection). "Ivory Tower Intellectual" was used as a slur … as though we really don't want an intelligent, educated person in the White House.
Which, apparently, a lot of us don't.
Not exactly encouraging.
@grimbles: "I can't recall anytime in recent history that it's happened in Aus."
Yeah, it's funny. Nixon got impeached here, and stepped down. Fucking Clinton got impeached over a goddamn blow job … but here's Bush, spying on the US public (rather than just wiretapping a few hotel rooms), blatantly lying to send US troops into battle, and so on and so forth, and even AFTER the supposed "opposition" takes over Congress, where's the impeachment? What the fuck?
@Rick: "… we don't vote independent because we feel like we're wasting our vote."
Oh, I've heard that a fuck ton of times. And if EVERYONE who ever said/thought/felt that way ACTUALLY went out and voted third party for President (and Congress) in the next election, the US would instantly have a genuine multi-party system.
@Kavan Wolfe: "Wow, not everyone gets to inspire a post on his favorite blog."
haha! Hey, not everyone gets someone calling their blog a favorite! ;-)
"… the last two sentences there are about as deep a zeitgeist of the last 7 years as I've ever seen"
Yeah, that's why it's next to impossible to actually find the entire essay online … lol. Everyone quotes the last paragraph (or maybe the last two), and forgets the rest. ;-)
@Zef: "… voulentarily have stepped down and admitted he screwed up."
27th July 2008 at 3:01 pm | permalink |HAHAHAHAHAHAHA … *snif* Sorry! I'm not laughing at the idea itself. Of course that's the way it should work. Have a government with politicians who have some sense of honor and/or shame? Fantastic idea. But the effort of reconciling Bush's apparent God complex with any sense of dignity and honor? THAT is fucking hilarious. ;-)
Ok ok :D But with all the shit the POTUS and his cronies have done, I can't understand why people aren't out in the streets yelling and screaming and burning shit down
27th July 2008 at 3:57 pm | permalink |@Dave: Yeah, can't argue with you there. heh
27th July 2008 at 5:04 pm | permalink |For all of his incisiveness, Mencken was more a cynic than anything else. In the book, Inherit the Wind, the character of E.K. Hornbeck (a proxy for H.L. Mencken) is chastised by Drummond (Clarence Darrow's proxy) for his journalistic work, stating "the only time you placed a noun against a verb was to blow something up."
Years ago, I had a lengthy discussion with a philosophy professor friend of mine about some of the shortcomings of American society. In response, he told me that the cynic only offered criticism without correction; fault-finding, but no solutions. The cynic serves a useful purpose in helping us understand our own faults. But let's not mistake the cynic for a priest.
28th July 2008 at 7:18 am | permalink |@Becca: Oh, he was a total cynic. But a damn funny one. ;-)
Although, seen in historical perspective, this piece is actually really depressing … voter apathy, political ignorance, mindless dogmatism: they're often discussed as though they were unique, modern phenomena. People these days blame everything on modern public schools, TV, video games, the internet, blah, blah, blah.
But then you read this, and realize "Hey, wait. It was like that before any of the 'modern evils' we blame everything on today. Fuck." And good ol' Mencken, to hell with throwing out any suggestions for prevention or improvement of the situation. ;-)
28th July 2008 at 12:15 pm | permalink |Fuckers have been searching for the perfect system since the beginning of fuckers. Thousands and thousands of years looking for a system, to bring about harmony and peace. Still we’re looking. It seems to me it cannot be found?
28th July 2008 at 2:24 pm | permalink |Maybe we’re not suited for such extravagant societies ourselves with our quest for money, babes, guys, McDonalds, McShit, McFuck, McPOWER, etc. etc.?
@ Alpha: Heh. :-)
Anytime I want a demonstration of the roots of voter apathy, I need only spend 5 minutes discussing politics with my family. Utterly incurious, ignorant, uninformed, and dependent upon the talking points of people like Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.
28th July 2008 at 2:25 pm | permalink |@bill: That would be my suspicion as well … sadly enough.
OTOH, a lot of things have improved over the last thousand years, so I don't think giving up is going to solve anything either. ;-)
@Becca: Sounds like one of the local bartenders here. On the upside, talking to her about politics does make me want to drink more, so maybe it works for the bar. heh
28th July 2008 at 4:18 pm | permalink |Improved? Yeah, we have bigger guns!
28th July 2008 at 5:44 pm | permalink |Giving up? No, why?
Maybe countries are better of managed by smart people? I do think so.(Instead of professional politicians)
Or maybe the smart ones get lost and taunted too, who knows?
@bill: Bigger guns? How about the fact that women have legal status greater than that of cattle in the Western world (and much of the rest of the world as well)? Or the fact that you're no longer likely to die of an abscessed tooth, smallpox or polio? Or the fact that black people are no longer kept as livestock by white people? How 'bout the fact that the Catholic Church doesn't burn people at the stake any more? And what about the fact that there are almost a dozen widely available methods by which people can have recreational sex without having children? And even on the war front, it's now considered bad form (rather than being the expected norm) for a country to expand its territory by invading and slaughtering the neighbors.
I think things have improved a whole hell of a lot, all things considered.
28th July 2008 at 8:03 pm | permalink |"How 'bout the fact that the Catholic Church doesn't burn people at the stake any more?"
28th July 2008 at 9:06 pm | permalink |That said, the current pope did head up the Inquisition before he took his current job… And he looks like Emperor Palpatine >.>
@grimbles: He's old though … I'm sure the dark side will finish devouring his soul from within any day now.
28th July 2008 at 9:14 pm | permalink |All that is fine. We still have bigger guns though. I wouldn’t call “not keeping black people as livestock”, the women issues, or everything else you mentioned as progress, rather than a matter of course. Still to day you don’t have to go very far to find medieval conditions in the world.
29th July 2008 at 2:22 am | permalink |Utah… Oh, wait, conditions, not mentality. Gotcha.
Texas. >=)
29th July 2008 at 5:48 am | permalink |@bill: I never said it was all a matter of course, I just said I thought things had gotten a lot better in the last thousand years. Of course it's not universal, nor is progress automatic. But things *are* improving.
29th July 2008 at 10:37 am | permalink |@bill: Well you have a good portion of the world progressing. So conditions for various people that have gotten better is not progress? We can split hairs but calling it a matter of course assumes that things would you know, progress along a path. Isn't that progress?
It's not so much that people are afraid of smart people it is that people tend to vote based on reaction and not informed consent. That is why Bush was able to get re-relected. It had nothing to do with perceived intelligence. If anything it showed how stupid some people can react.
30th July 2008 at 3:31 am | permalink |@Larry - "It's not so much that people are afraid of smart people it is that people tend to vote based on reaction and not informed consent.
Reaction to what? I'm not being a smart ass, I'm curious.
30th July 2008 at 6:43 am | permalink |@Larry: Well I was a bit hasty there I admit that. Of course there’s progress in the world when it comes to technology, where one invention builds upon earlier discoveries and so on. But the human brain hasn’t grown bigger or developed extra brain cells, in that sense there’s been no progression (mentally). It seems to me we’re stuck somehow in never-ending religion and traditions, which we then pass on to our children so they get stuck there too. And that slows progression down considerably.
30th July 2008 at 7:28 am | permalink |@bill - The brain may have grown no bigger but ideas have the same evolutionary traits as creatures, and it may take a while for the dinosaurs of religion to die out, but you can be sure that they inevitably will :)
All it takes is for us small mammals to keep chipping away at those ancient lies that allow them to breed.
4th August 2008 at 4:15 pm | permalink |Heh. Found while doing some research on de Tocqueville. Turns out he was quite the prognosticator:
This rapidly democratizing society, as Tocqueville understood it, had a population devoted to "middling" values which wanted to amass, through hard work, vast fortunes. In Tocqueville's mind, this explained why America was so different from Europe. In Europe, he claimed, nobody cared about making money. The lower classes had no hope of gaining more than minimal wealth, while the upper classes found it crass, vulgar, and unbecoming of their sort to care about something as unseemly as money; many were virtually guaranteed wealth and took it for granted. At the same time in America workers would see people fashioned in exquisite attire and merely proclaim that through hard work they too would soon possess the fortune necessary to enjoy such luxuries.
These unique American values may explain American exceptionalism and shed light upon many mysterious phenomena, such as why America has never embraced socialism. To Tocqueville, America was set apart by its peculiar democratic mores. But, despite maintaining, with Aristotle, More, Montesquieu, and others that the balance of property determined the balance of power, Tocqueville argued that, as America showed, equitable property holdings did not ensure the rule of the best men. In fact, it did quite the opposite. The widespread, relatively equitable property ownership which distinguished America and determined its mores and values also explained why the American masses held elites in such contempt.
More than just imploding any traces of old-world aristocracy, ordinary Americans also refused to defer to those possessing, as Tocqueville put it, superior talent and intelligence. These natural elites, who Tocqueville asserted were the lone virtuous members of American society, could not enjoy much share in the political sphere as a result. Ordinary Americans enjoyed too much power, claimed too great a voice in the public sphere, to defer to intellectual superiors. This culture promoted a relatively pronounced equality, Tocqueville argued, but the same mores and opinions that ensured such equality also promoted, as he put it, a middling mediocrity.
Those who possessed true virtue and talent would be left with limited choices. Those with the most education and intelligence would either, Tocqueville prognosticated, join limited intellectual circles to explore the weighty and complex problems facing society which have today become the academic or contemplative realms, or use their superior talents to take advantage of America's growing obsession with money-making and amass vast fortunes in the private sector. Uniquely positioned at a crossroads in American History, Tocqueville's Democracy in America attempted to capture the essence of American culture and values.
9th August 2008 at 3:12 am | permalink |Very interesting. Thanks Becca!
9th August 2008 at 7:58 am | permalink |@Becca: Dammit Becca, now I need to add something else to my "must read" list. I'm either going to need to become a hermit, or join one of those loopy life extension cults to make it through everything!
10th August 2008 at 1:27 pm | permalink |@ alpha: Sorry.
12th August 2008 at 10:51 am | permalink |